


closing the door

by hellynz



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: just in case you missed the achive warning, this is about a death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 20:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18746179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellynz/pseuds/hellynz
Summary: Written very quickly and entirely unedited so BEWARE.





	closing the door

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [After the Fact](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18745744) by [hetzi_clutch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hetzi_clutch/pseuds/hetzi_clutch). 



> Written very quickly and entirely unedited so BEWARE.

Regeneration was always a burning, heat from within like opening a kiln, deep and suffocating and ready to burst. Stepping out of an air conditioned building into the summer heat, getting into your car after it’s been sat in the sun for hours, they held nothing to the fiery claws that destroyed her and birthed her again. There were many times when she’d thought she would combust from it. Times when she did.

Regeneration is very, very hot. It turns out dying is cold.

The Doctor gives up.

It’s not something she does easily, or without regret. But her elbows are shaking, her knees are sore, and she even the slow crawling she’s managed for a bit is too much now. Her head spins from the blood loss and she tries to ignore the dull pounding behind her eyes, the drugs holding back the only thing she could really do to change the situation anyway.

She raises her head. The TARDIS is still metres away. Her arms give out and she collapses.

Face down in the dirt, she can hear her beloved ship pressing in the back of her mind, wailing, moaning. Mourning, already, because they both know.

She wants to be sick. She’s not sure she has the energy.

The wound in her abdomen is screaming, and with the last of her energy she shoves her body over and cries out as she rolls, her pain echoing through the empty field. Off in the distance, maybe miles away, she can still hear the sounds of the factory she’d tried to save, all on her own, alone. It was a trap. She’d escaped, but she had not succeeded.

She is so tired.

Once her vision comes back from the blinding white pain, she is lying on her back and looking at the sky. One sun has set and the other is soon to follow, a dark blue creeping on the edges of her vision as it dips below the horizon. She thinks she can almost see stars.

Another moan in her skull. She rolls her neck and twists, trying to see her again, but she can barely make out a top corner. “Oh, my poor ghost monument,” she whispers, her voice too hoarse for anything more even if she’d wanted to. “I’m so sorry.”

Her eyes are straining. Her neck aches on top of everything else. She lets her head fall back to a neutral position, looks for the stars again. Not quite there yet.

She once knew what would come after, in theory. Her consciousness would have been harvested, stored, would not remain aware but would still exist. Now, though, she has no clue.

“Don’t let me die,” she says to nobody, anybody, and tears prick suddenly, traitorously, to her eyes. _Not_ _like_ _this_. _Please_.

_Don’t do this to my friends._

“They won’t know what happened to me,” she croaks, and as the realization hits she is sobbing, her chest heaving through the pain, face screwed up, tears streaming down her face and her raw throat burning with her gasps. The TARDIS shrieks with her, desperate. She cannot catch her breath.

A violent shiver runs through her and she stops. Her breathing is slow now, more of a wheeze, and it _hurts_. She can still feel the regeneration energy, just barely contained, its heat banging against a sealed door.

Her vision is fading, but so is the last of the light.

She thinks of Ryan and Graham, together at a kitchen table. Yaz in her leather jacket, leaning against a counter. They will worry. They may even try to look for her.

“Oh, my love, could you please-” her words cut off with a rattle, her chest spasming. _Go_ _to_ _them_ , _please_ , _please_ _so_ _they_ _know_ , _so_ _they_ _don’t_ _wonder_.

The ship moans to her again, creaking, old, timeless, something inside it already fading, going with her, won’t leave you won’t leave you won’t leave you won’t-

“Please- go now. Now. They can’t think... I...” and she’s crying again, because it’s unfair. She has so much left to do, there’s always more to do, there’s always someone who needs help and who else will do it? Who else will be there for the universe, because it won’t be her anymore. Signals will be ignored. Prayers will go unanswered. Everything will continue, but without her in it.

“Don’t let them think I left them behind,” she begs, and that’s what does it. She wants to look, wants one last look so badly, but her body is lost in a fog, she cannot feel it anymore, can only listen to the roaring of the engine and the brakes, to the shudder and the cries as her TARDIS slips away to Sheffield. Her tears don’t stop this time.

Night has finally fallen. She is finally utterly alone.

“I’m scared,” she whispers to the stars. And then she is no more.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry


End file.
